


Trill

by badteeth



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Invention, Post-Canon, Pre-Forbidden West, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badteeth/pseuds/badteeth
Summary: Before Aloy starts out on the next part of her journey, she addresses a potential hazard.
Relationships: Aloy & Avad (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2020





	Trill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



Even in the winter months, the air outside Cauldron XI felt heavy and thick. Aloy enjoyed her first winter outside the Sacred Land—certainly preferred it to The Cut—but it still took an extra breath for her to ease herself into the world. Perhaps she’d been spending too much time indoors. It was certainly more time than she ever had before.

But even in those first months after Aloy had found her focus, she’d never before had so many questions, so much information to detangle, with so many people turning toward her.

She exhaled. It wasn’t like she’d been sitting alone in some mountaintop. The time had been good for her. Allowed her to experiment. She unfurled her fingers.

The thing didn’t look much like any bird Aloy had ever seen, more like a rat with wings, and its metalwork was so fine that she almost didn’t trust it to stay together any better than the last iteration, or the one before that. But it was supposed to be inconspicuous, and the only way to know was to test it out.

It glowed blue as its wings spread out, glittering in the sun’s dimming rays. This close, she could still hear the delicate mechanical whirring. Aloy spoke clearly. “Message to Avad, the Sun-King: This is Aloy. I hope this message finds you well. We’ll discuss its method of delivery when I see you next. Stop.”

There was no response, long enough that frustration popped in Aloy’s chest about another failed trial, but then with a flutter of its wings, the little machine took off in the direction of Meridian.

By tomorrow, she would know if it worked. Maybe she’d even need to come up with a name for it.

***

Mornings started later in the city, but once the marketplaces were open and bustling, the noise bloomed louder and further than anything Aloy encountered in the wild. She jolted awake at a shout—some clumsy manueving in a narrow alleyway. 

Last night’s nightmare was already fading in her mind, but the fear, the blood-stained images of poison and corruption, still clung as she forced herself through the motions of sitting up in her bed and throwing her legs over its edge.

The Lodge itself wasn’t too busy, yet, with most of its members either at their real homes or already tracking down their next kill—there were rumors that Tanalah was eyeing a Fireclaw of her own. It left an open bed for her more often than not, although Aloy still hesitated to let herself settle into place. While the Sacred Land had never truly felt how she thought a home should, Meridian still felt too unwieldy to trust. But a bed was a bed, safety was safety, and sometimes it was worth being where you could easily reach people.

With any luck, the bird would help with the last bit, at least.

  
  
  


Aloy found Avad in his overlook, as he always was, but he looked excited, for once, and Aloy let the pride bloom in her chest as he said, “Aloy! I received your message. What a miraculous little machine this is—is it your own invention?”

She rolled her shoulders as she checked over the twist of metal sitting in Avad’s hand, undamaged and tame. “Most of the technology was already there.”

“Humility doesn’t suit you, Aloy,” he scoffed, although his face stayed open, expectant.

“It’s not humility,” Aloy said. “They had something similar in the Old World, and with the intelligence built into the cauldrons, it really only took… a nudge.”

A nudge, and months of chasing after single notes, hints, wires and ancient towers, careful maneuvering as to not catch  HEPHAESTUS’ attention. But while Aloy didn’t pride herself on sitting on hoarded knowledge, unlike  _ some  _ people, she knew by now that people could only accept so much new information at a time.

Still, Aloy added, “They should be able to travel as far as the tallnecks are connected, powered by the sun. Until we can get enough focuses and make them safe enough…”

“Certainly much faster than a messenger. And if we get a few more of these, it'll be a challenge to get the Matriarchs to agree, but everyone else...” Avad concluded, eyes shining.

“Exactly,” and because Aloy knew Avad's creatively would be clouded by diplomacy, she added, “They should help when I leave for the west.”

She said it with certainty, but the weight of it hung in the air, heavier even than that first passage through the Daytower Gate. Nora superstition and bad blood maintained its borders. Whatever lied past the western mountain range was a true mystery, sketched out by only the thinnest whispers, and the Tenakth were less likely allies than a thunderjaw. 

But it was also where some of the Old World’s greatest cities were. The sort that, if the notes and data Aloy had digged up were telling the truth, would make the rubble scattered around Carja and Nora land look as small as the bird still resting in Avad’s hand.

Their people must have been devastated by the Faro Plague, but the information they must have left behind…

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I could say to change your mind,” Avad said.

“Do you want to try?”

“Not really,” Avad admitted. “And I know it would not be your goal, but in all honesty, the Sundom would benefit from some more up to date scouting. Marad does what he can, but there have been so many internal threats, I worry sometimes that we have not been making time for what lurks in the shadows. Will you be leaving soon?”

Aloy shook her head. “Not until spring. Maybe later.”

“Well, that gives us plenty of time for you to teach me how this little thing works,” Avad replied easily, or as relaxed as he ever sounded. Aloy knew there was a line of Carja citizens waiting behind them, wanting to talk about taxes and unsaverly merchants and neighborly grievances and all the other little things that make a kingdom work, but Avad always made time for their conversations. The least Aloy could do was return the favor.

She nodded and stepped forward to point at the eyes, antena, voicebox. Avad listened closely. 

**Author's Note:**

> Or; those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat inventing twitter.
> 
> Thank you for reading <33


End file.
